As everybody’s favorite super minor Star Wars character, Admiral Akbar is known to say – “It’s a Trap”! In fantasy football, we see trap players every week, where the average fantasy player looks at a box score and essentially chases last week’s production. However, last week’s production doesn’t do us any good.
In fact, being overly reliant on what happened before rather than looking ahead can be the key to ruining many great fantasy teams. We have only seen one week of a very long season. Every week matters, for sure, but with such a small sample size, we need to keep things in perspective.
It’s amazing how many people I’ve seen online and on social media already raising the banner because their “great pick” had a huge week one, and how many people are already waving the flag because they must be doomed. Bro, chill!
For instance, you picked Tyreek Hill in the first round and Calvin Ridley in the third round. Calvin and Tyreek had great days, you’re obviously the best drafter in the whole wide world and everyone else in your league should just quit… Or, maybe, just maybe, we can’t expect Calvin Ridley to end up with 1,700 yards and 17 TDs this year or Tyreek Hill to get 3,400 yards and 34 TDs.
The reality is that Calvin Ridley should be a very good player, but he isn’t going to produce at this same rate every week all year. Teams will start recognizing that Ridley is back to form and they’ll adjust. Christian Kirk will have his weeks where he gets more involved, and the ball will be more spread out, etc. That doesn’t mean Ridley will be bad, in fact, I think he’ll be quite good, but you need to avoid getting too high and too low.
Tyreek Hill is potentially an all-time great receiver, but we’ve seen this before. He has weeks like this, and he’ll have those weeks with three catches for 40 yards, too.
It’s just the nature of the animal.
Nothing has changed that we didn’t already know. The same is true in the reverse. Not all great performances mean you’re going to go 17-0, and certainly not all turd-drop performances mean you should blow up your team.
I know it is easy to get emotional and overreact, but I want you to think about this. I watch a lot of movies where the badass protagonist enters a room and proceeds to beat down every bad guy in sight (think John Wick or Equalizer), do you know what the protagonist never does? He never panics, he never gets emotional. He destroys his enemies and moves on. We need to treat fantasy football the same way.
I legitimately saw people apologizing about telling people to draft Rhamondre Stevenson on Twitter or X or whatever the hell, social media is the devil. Why are you apologizing, dude? Because Rhamondre had one bad game when he was sick? Against the Eagles D? Get the hell out of here. Now in fairness, I was not that high on Rhamondre this year and I’m still not. I think Ezekiel Elliott is there to take all the goal line work ala Damien Harris from a few years ago, so I think Rhamondre is more of a solid RB2 than the back-end RB1 that some advocated for you to draft him as, but that doesn’t mean you should be dropping him or trading him for peanuts either.
A little bit of temperance is in order. Remember, most of these guys didn’t play in the preseason, so Week 1 always ends up being a glorified preseason game. Past performance for Rhamondre and the Patriots’ RB usage tells us what is real.
There are three areas I focus on to suss out what is real and what is not (especially early in the season when there is limited sample size available): Current News, Past Performance, and Logic.
Let me give you a few examples from this week to illustrate this process in action:
TYLER ALLGEIER
This is an example of making use of current news but also applying logic after the fact. Quick question, if I start Tyler Allgeier in my lineup this week, how many of his 75 yards and 2 touchdowns from last week carry over? That’s right, none.
If you think this is who Allgeier is and what he will be doing all year long… it’s a trap! However, we also need to recognize what is right in front of us. The Falcons coaching staff said all preseason that Allgeier wouldn’t disappear, and everyone just decided that they didn’t want to believe that because Bijan Robinson is so good.
Surprise! They weren’t lying.
Sometimes we just need to believe what we’re told (similar situation in Philadelphia where the coaches and beat writers made it clear that Kenneth Gainwell was the most trusted guy, but nobody seemed to want to hear that and were then shocked when he got the start).
As is usually the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle when we apply logic. Allgeier will continue to be involved in the offense and Bijan will eventually get a larger portion because he’s too talented even for Arthur Smith and his mustache to leave off the field. However, just because Allgeier will still be involved going forward doesn’t mean that he’s going to score twice every week, and (hopefully) it doesn’t mean that Drake London and Kyle Pitts will combine to catch fewer balls than toddlers catch at a T-Ball game every week.
Basically, we needed to recognize the potential for Allgeier to still matter based on current news, but also, after a crazy performance, we need to temper expectations with the knowledge that this was also a much better-than-usual performance. He could get enough carries weekly to warrant 50+ yards with a sporadic TD, but that isn’t something we need to lose our minds over.
BUCS AND RAMS PASSING GAMES
The Bucs and Rams’ passing games both looked much better than was expected, and one of them was a trap. This is an example of using past performance to guide our logic.
Has Matt Stafford ever had success as a passer in this league? Yes, every year, except for last year when he had major injury issues. Otherwise, he has always been a top-tier passer regarding yardage in the league.
Has Baker Mayfield ever been good at anything besides making me change the channel when his insurance commercials come on the screen? No, no, he has not. So again, looking at past performance and the fact that Mayfield has never really had sustained success at supporting top-tier WR performances, I think we can temper expectations for Mike Evans and Chris Godwin and realize that they are both what we should have thought they were before this week. Still usable players, still fine guys to have on a team, not receivers to rely on consistently for your team.
The Rams, on the other hand, got completely buried in drafts because last year was terrible, and then more recently, the Cooper Kupp injury hit. Yet, Stafford has been a very good QB for a long time, so as long as he has health (recently a problem) he should sling the rock a bit.
Again, we need to use logic. At some point, in theory, Kupp will be back. He and Stafford will once again be holding hands on their way to throw the one ring into Mount Doom together, so Puka Nacua and Tutu Atwell don’t have the same long-term appeal that they might currently seem to have because they don’t recreate the Lady and the Tramp spaghetti scene with Stafford like Kupp does. One or both of those receivers should be decent for at least a little while, but don’t forget that Van Jefferson still exists and has been repeatedly named the top dog in LA while Kupp is down, so don’t be surprised to see him pop off soon at the expense of one of the others, so to some degree… it’s a trap!
Okay, I just like writing that. You caught me.
BOTTOM LINE
The bottom line is, we need to stay up on the news and recognize that, on occasion, coaches aren’t lying. We need to look at past performance and say – does this look real? We need to apply logic to any blips in the box score, both good and bad, and again, defer to points one and two if that information exists for us to look at.
The Bengals will be fine; Javonte Williams and Jahmyr Gibbs will both be fire this year if Week 1 truly represents being “eased in,” as their coaches claim; and Zach Wilson does suck, but that doesn’t change the fact that Garrett Wilson is still a super talented player.
Just apply the three principles – current news, past performance, and logic – and you should come to these same conclusions. Use my method whenever you need to and take advantage of those league mates who don’t have the patience and temperance to apply these simple principles and dominate your leagues!
